In a ruling that could carry implications for comedy clubs across Canada, the Supreme Court of British Columbia has upheld the right of a bar patron to receive five-figures in damages from a comedian whose performance she alleges gave her post-traumatic stress disorder.

In 2011, Toronto comedian Guy Earle was ordered by the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal to pay $15,000 to Lorna Pardy, a homosexual woman who said she suffered “lasting physical and psychological effect” after Mr. Earle directed a string of lesbian slurs at her during a 2007 Vancouver open mic night.

On Wednesday, B.C. highest court ruled against Mr. Earle’s assertion that comedy clubs should remain special places devoted to the “fearless pursuit of free speech” and that the Tribunal’s decision would have a “chilling effect on performances and artists in British Columbia.”

Offensive, irreverent and inappropriate
Rather, ruled Justice Jon Sigurdson, while comedy clubs may swirl with “offensive, irreverent and inappropriate” language they are not operating in “zones of absolute immunity from human rights legislation.”

In May of 2007, Lorna Pardy and a girlfriend were at Zesty’s, a Vancouver restaurant with largely gay clientele, when an open mic night hosted by Mr. Earle kicked off. The two women decided to stay and watch the show.

According to the later findings of the Human Rights Tribunal, during the show Ms. Pardy’s girlfriend had merely pecked her on the cheek when Mr. Earle told the crowd “Don’t mind that inconsiderate dyke table over there. You know lesbians are always ruining it for everybody.”

Ian Smith / Postmedia News fileLorna Pardy enters the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal in Vancouver on March 29, 2010.
The line prompted boos from Ms. Pardy’s table and kicked off an escalating string of slurs and lesbian-themed quips, climaxing with a pair of off-stage confrontations in which Ms. Pardy threw two glasses of water at the comedian and he, in turn, broke her sunglasses.

As Mr. Earle told it, however, the couple was passionately kissing in the front row and repeatedly interrupting the set with obscenities when Mr. Earle tried to “shut up” the table with the quip “you’re not even lesbians; no guy will f*** you, that’s why you’re with each other” — thus kicking off the ugly escalation.

After a pair of agitated conversations with the bar owner the next day, the last of which resulted in Ms. Pardy screaming to restaurant patrons that the owner condoned violence against women, Ms. Pardy took her case to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.

In April, 2011, tribunal member Murray Geiger-Adams issued a detailed 102-page tribunal report that pored over diagrams of the restaurant, probed the origins of the weekly open mic night and even examined the Iraqi background of the bar’s owner (“[H]e was a member of both ethnic and Christian religious minority groups, and experienced discrimination himself,” it notes).

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Further complicating matters was the fact that virtually all of the testimony came from people who had been drinking, requiring Mr. Geiger-Adams to sift through multiple competing storylines.

In the end, the tribunal ruled that Mr. Earle’s attack had aggravated Ms. Pardy’s “pre-existing condition of generalized anxiety disorder with panic attacks, and caused her PTSD.” Long after the episode, for instance, Ms. Pardy said that simply hearing Mr. Earle recount the evening in a radio interview caused her to miss work.

When asked why she did not simply leave the establishment, instead of staying until the very end of the performance, “she said she didn’t leave because she was too shocked, and that she literally could not get up from the booth,” according to decision documents. As for the water-throwing, “Mr. Earle’s conduct had put Ms. Pardy in a condition where she was unable to immediately formulate a measured, or even rational, response.”

She was unable to immediately formulate a measured, or even rational, response
In addition to Mr. Earle’s $15,000 penalty, the restaurant was also ordered to pay $7,000 to Ms. Pardy on the grounds that since the owner had given Mr. Earle a small bar tab to host the event, the comedian was legally an employee. Restaurant owner Salam Ismail had already spent at least $13,000 in legal fees defending himself before the tribunal.

Mr. Earle’s lawyer, meanwhile, walked out on the tribunal proceedings early, alleging it was an “illegal process.”

In a Supreme Court challenge, Mr. Earle attempted to argue that Ms. Pardy “played a vital and highly dramatic role in utterly disrupting a performance by unpaid volunteers.”

“[C]omedy clubs are like no other places, the quintessential element that distinguishes them from vapid mainstream media is the fearless pursuit of free speech.”

Nevertheless, in the judge’s words, “Mr. Earle was not giving a comedy performance when he launched into his tirade of ugly words directed at Ms. Pardy.”

“In the end, this is not a case about the scope of expression in a comedy performance or an artistic performance,” he wrote. “It is about verbal and physical abuse that amounts to adverse treatment based on sex and sexual orientation.”

Unless of course you're gay, trans, a minority etc. then you can do whatever the hell you want, as long as you only target those below you on the minority heirarchy. Here's the pyramid in case you forget ... whites -> males -> other races -> women -> jewish people -> LGBT.

Otherwise just play safe and make sure you only offend or target religion and religious people, then you'll get bonus points and no one in power will care.

While admittedly I was not there, assuming the report is accurate, and I'm understanding you correctly, you're getting worked up over censorship of comedy when it isn't the comedy act that got him in shit. Rather it was a directed and personal attack.

it's actually about some twatty couple heckling the show which automatically puts you in the firing line and rightly so as you are ruining the performers show and everyone elses experience especially when they weren't even there for his act they just stayed anyways. So then the stupid broads have the gall to throw water at his face and then make up all this poor me i'm somehow physically and mentally hurt and I have to take time off work and i'm gonna take 15k off you for that.

Really if anyone thinks any part of this story is 1% ok I don't wanna speak to you because the absurdity of the whole thing is beyond comprehension. And this judge needs to be sacked and forced into early retirement.

it's actually about some twatty couple heckling the show which automatically puts you in the firing line and rightly so as you are ruining the performers show and everyone elses experience especially when they weren't even there for his act they just stayed anyways. So then the stupid broads have the gall to throw water at his face and then make up all this poor me i'm somehow physically and mentally hurt and I have to take time off work and i'm gonna take 15k off you for that.

Really if anyone thinks any part of this story is 1% ok I don't wanna speak to you because the absurdity of the whole thing is beyond comprehension. And this judge needs to be sacked and forced into early retirement.

I guess it really depends, he never said that they were hecklig, he said they were making out, and they said they weren't. But it's not as cut and dry as that, they didn't just pull this decision out of a hat. They would have called witnesses to collaborate the story. Do I necessarily feel like they reacted perfectly? No, they sunk to his presumed level by throwing water at him, and they decided to stay for the whole event even though that wasn't their original intent. It's easy to sit there as a white, straight male and say that people should just have broader shoulders, you have probably never experienced discrimination for something so basic. We all react differently to different things, he just happened to confront someone who refused to knuckle under.

oh jeez the poor me thing, you don't think some white males feel uncomfortable walking into rough neighborhoods or being picked out at say the apollo theatre by a black comic but we man up and say who cares. No they never get the full story from the guy ever, in other articles that has this story it specifically says they were talking loud and making out in front of everyone.

No one deserves 15k for that, money should only be given in the court of law from one civilian to another if it was an assault and to pay for whatever recovery things they need.

Also again I love how white males are always the scapegoat to we have everything and nothing bad ever happens to us when in reality plenty of shit happens to us probably more than a lot of other groups but again we don't complain about it we go about our business. Maybe this is a female trait that thinks it's right to get a whole bunch of money for doing nothing which if true is incredibly sad

oh jeez the poor me thing, you don't think some white males feel uncomfortable walking into rough neighborhoods or being picked out at say the apollo theatre by a black comic but we man up and say who cares. No they never get the full story from the guy ever, in other articles that has this story it specifically says they were talking loud and making out in front of everyone.

No one deserves 15k for that, money should only be given in the court of law from one civilian to another if it was an assault and to pay for whatever recovery things they need.

Also again I love how white males are always the scapegoat to we have everything and nothing bad ever happens to us when in reality plenty of shit happens to us probably more than a lot of other groups but again we don't complain about it we go about our business. Maybe this is a female trait that thinks it's right to get a whole bunch of money for doing nothing which if true is incredibly sad

You're comparing apples and oranges, my friend. Feeling uncomfortable as you walk into a 'rough' neighborhood is far from discrimination. I wasn't making a blanket statement about all white straight males, I was saying making a broad assumption about you specifically, I apologize. I find it interesting you feel like straight white males are discriminated against a lot more than other groups, however I digress.

Reverse discrimination at its finest... Behold our new weaker world... Any person who feels the need to put a title in front of nationality, creed, preference or religion is at fault here. Why can't we all be human beings and quit keeping census on these catagories. Human here please don't take away that right